The Constitution? Why That's Just an OLD Document! It's not Relevant!

It's a new year but any hopes you may have been holding that E.J. Dionne would pull his head out of ...the sand...are unfounded. 

Dionne has penned his usual delusional column for the WaPo this morning citing the wonderful compromises the Democrats tried to make during their tenure as majority in Congress.  In fact, he says, the problem with Democrats is that they compromised too much:

Democrats did not overreach in the 111th Congress. On the contrary, they compromised regularly. Compromise made the health care bill far more complicated than it had to be and the original stimulus bill too small. Democrats would have been better off getting more done more quickly and more coherently. 

Well, "coherently" would indeed have been better but you'd be hard pressed to get it done more quickly as most in Congress didn't have time to read it as it was.  Certainly not the stimulus bill.

Dionne scoffs at the GOP intent to begin the next Congress with a full reading of the Constitution and the suggestion that bills must have constitutional authority attached.  He calls this "an obvious sop to the Tea Party movement" and suggests:

One can imagine that the rule's primary practical result will be the creation of a small House bureaucracy responsible for churning out constitutional justifications for whatever gets introduced.

Ye gads, we can't have any more bureaucracy in Washington!  No!  The huge bureaucracies established by Obamacare have already taken up all the office space! 

Seriously, Dionne has no respect for the Constitution whatsoever.  He scoffs at those of you who would regard it as "sacred scripture" rather than "a collection of shrewd political compromises."  You aren't supposed to take that "right to bear arms" thing literally, don't you know?  It's an old document!  Out of touch with today's facts!  It's not relevant anymore!  It was written by a bunch of passionate old men prone to foolishness!  Or so says the historian Dionne cites.


Just forget that old thing!  In fact, let's debate it, Dionne suggests, and figure out what the Constitution really means!  How about you just take a civics class, Mr. Dionne?  Most of us already understand that document.

No, any hopes you may have been holding that Dionne would change or somehow be rational are now dashed.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.